Wainer Read online

and looked up at night tothe stars, and when he drank cool water, or breathed morning air, orwalked or sat or lay down, what was there for him to think?

  He had one life, the same as any man, one time to be upon the Earth, andit was ending now as a record of nothing, as a piece of lonelinesscarved with great pain, as a celestial abortion, withered, wasted. Therewas nothing in his life, nothing, nothing, which he had ever wanted tobe, and now he was dying without reason in a world without reason,unused, empty, collapsing, alone.

  He went down to the beach again.

  In the days that came, he was a shocking sight. What was happeningbecame known, and when he walked the streets people stared at thewonder, the sickness, the man who was dying. Therefore he went out tothe beaches and slept and took no treatments and no one will ever knowwhat was in his mind, his million-faceted mind, as he waited to die.

  * * * * *

  Well, it was told to me at last because I knew Wainer, and they neededhim. It was told hesitantly, but when I heard it I broke away and ran,and in the clean air of the beach I found Wainer and told him.

  At first he did not listen. I repeated it several times. I told him whatthe Rashes had been able to learn. He stood breathing heavily, face tothe Sun, staring out over the incoming sea. Then I knew what he wasthinking.

  The Rashes had told me this:

  The atrophy of the lungs was not all that happened, but it was the majorthing, and it came only to Rejects. After years of study, it could bestated, cautiously, that the disease seemed to be in the nature of an_evolutionary_ change. For many years they had probed for the cause ofthe Rejects, and the final conclusion--to be kept from the people--wasthat there was some variation in the brain of the Reject, somethingsubtly, unfathomably different from the brain of a Rash. And so it wasalso with the lungs, and with other parts of the body. And thescientists thought it was Evolution.

  I told this to Wainer, and more, while peace spread slowly across hisrugged face. I said that the nature of life was to grow and adapt, andthat no one knew why. The first cells grew up in the sea and thenlearned to live on land, and eventually lifted themselves to the air,and now certainly there was one last step to be taken.

  The next phase of change would be into space, and it was clear now whatWainer was, what all the Rejects were.

  Wainer was a link, incomplete, groping, unfinished. A link.

  It meant more to him, I think, than any man can ever really understand.He had a purpose, after all, but it was more than that. He was acreature with a home. He was part of the Universe more deeply than anyof us had ever been. In the vast eternal plan which only You and Yourkind can see, Wainer was a beginning, vital part. All the long yearswere not wasted. The pain of the lungs was dust and air.

  Wainer looked at me and I shall never forget his face. He was a man atpeace who has lived long enough.

  (Because They knew much more than the old man could ever know, They wereutterly, nakedly absorbed, and the silence of the room was absolute. Theold man tired and closed to the end, while They--unbreathing, undying,telepathic and more, the inconceivable next phase in the Evolution ofMan--listened and learned.)

  * * * * *

  He lived for another six months, long enough to take part in theexperiments the Rashes had planned, and to write the Tenth Symphony.Even the Rashes could not ignore the Tenth.

  It was Wainer's valedictory, a sublime, triumphant summation, born ofhis hope for the future of Man. It was more than music; it was acathedral in sound. It was Wainer's soul.

  Wainer never lived to hear it played, to hear himself become famous, andin the end, I know, he did not care. Although we could have saved himfor a little while, although I pleaded with him to remain for the sakeof his woman and his music, Wainer knew that the pattern of his life wasfinished, that the ending time was now.

  For Wainer went out into space at last, into the sweet dark home betweenthe stars, moving toward the only great moment he would ever have.

  The Rashes wanted to see how his lungs would react in alien atmospheres.Not in a laboratory--Wainer refused--but out in the open Sun, out in thestrange alien air of the worlds themselves, Wainer was set down. On eachof a dozen poisonous worlds he walked. He opened his helmet while wetiny men watched. He breathed.

  And he lived.

  He lived through methane, through carbon dioxide, through nitrogen andpropane. He existed without air at all for an incredible time, livingall the while as he never had before, with a wonderful, glowingexcitement. And then at last there was that final world which wascorrosive. It was too much, and Wainer smiled regretfully, holdinghimself upright with dignity by the base of an alien rock, and stillsmiling, never once moving to close his helmet, he died.

  * * * * *

  There was a long pause. The old man was done.

  They looked at him with the deep compassion that his own race had deniedto those who were different or lesser than themselves.

  One of Them arose and gently spoke.

  "And now you are the last of your kind, as alone as Wainer was. We aresorry."

  There was no bitterness in the old man's voice. "Don't be. Wainer wascontent to die, knowing that he was the link between us and You. Yetneither he nor You could have been if humanity had never existed. We hadour place in the endless flow of history. We were, so to speak, Wainer'sparents and Your grandparents. I, too, am content, proud of the childrenof Man."